AIBU to think 15-minute cities are a good thing?

[ForthegracegoI]

I live in a 15-minute city location and it's absolutely brilliant.

Within 15 minutes walk I have easy access to:

Multiple cafes, bars, pubs, restaurants.
Multiple hairdressers, salons, barbers etc.
Many, many shops.
Several gyms.
Cinema.
Two swimming pools.
My oldest's high school is literally across the road. My youngest's school is slightly further, probably 12 minutes walk.
My GP, gynaecologist, dentist, optician - all within 10 minutes walk.
Trauma centre: when my youngest fell and broke his arm on the way home from school, he was in the trauma centre and being treated straight away. We walked there, and walked home afterwards.
Hospital - DH is having an operation in a couple of weeks: he'll walk there, and probably walk home a few days later
Veterinary surgery.
Small supermarket and two different fresh produce markets, and loads of bakers / grocers / 'metro' type supermarkets.
Huge park, including a zoo and botanical garden.
Four smaller parks with play equipment and outdoor gyms - one literally across the road.
Bus stops, underground stops and the main city railway station is (just) within 15 minutes walk.

The 'price' I pay for this:
We live in an apartment, not a house.
We don't have off street parking (we do still have a car for holidays / weekend trips / trips to IKEA for big items) but we do have resident parking - it's never been a problem to get parked.

For work, DH and I both cycle - 25 minutes each way. It's a great way to build exercise into the daily routine. Our apartment building has a secure bike storage room in it.

So as not to drip feed; we don't live in the UK, we live in France. We aren't huge earners - DH is a teacher, I work in administration in a school. We are definitely in a 'naice' area, but it's not super-wealthy at all.

I can't understand why Rishi Sunak would actively campaign against making essential services easily accessible to people living in cities.

@UsingChangeofName

Yes, exactly !! We’re on the same page.

The inner city estate next to me has some of those services. Most of them are closed . A lot of people wouldn't walk 10 mins even if the services were there due to beggars, druggies and not feeling safe. Anti social behaviour on public transport and our streets would also need to be resolved to help some people out of their cars

I live in London, but there is very little within 15 mins walk: a GP but not a hospital. Cinema closed years ago, nearest supermarket about 25 minutes walk, there are a few local shops but they are too expensive for a full family shop. The swimming pool has closed, the secondary school is trying to rebrand itself after going from 1500+ pupils to 400 in the space of about 5 years following the closure of its sixth form, and the building itself is falling down: it was due for major works but these were cancelled when Cameron was elected. It will probably be closed within the the next 5 years as the falling rolls in London will follow through to secondary schools soon enough- primary schools in the borough have already been told to expect closures. The playground is 25 minutes walk, and I don't know of any playgroups operating in the area any more.
The library is only open 2 afternoons a week, so not much good for full time workers.
However there is a pub😁. And a pizza restaurant and a fried chicken shop.
It's about 10 minutes from me, but for houses 10 minutes in the other direction, there's nothing closer.
I think 15 minute cities will be shit for most of us, we all know the infrastructure necessary will not be put in place, in fact we can't afford to maintain the existing structures,let alone build new ones.

@DelphiniumBlue what do you mean 15 min cities will be "shit for you"?

All it is is planning guidelines that councils should try and ensure common services and amenities are located across areas so that most people can access them without having to travel for very long.

It doesn't mean you will be a prisoner in your shit neighbourhood. If there is no playgroup there, you can continue going to wherever the playground currently is.

But it would help highlight to planners that there is a neighbourhood without a playground and focus efforts on trying to rectify that. Land could be set aside for one, for example as part of giving planning permission for some new flats, a developer could be required to build a public playground. The council could identify that your neighbourhood has few shops and would be a sensible place to reduce business rates for certain types of shops like grocers, bakeries. It could identify that your neighbourhood would benefit more than others from an improved bus services, new road crossings, lower speed limits or a new cycle route to the swimming pool

If your neighbourhood is currently shit, then possibly the concept to focus planning and development efforts to improve it, might actually be a good thing for you?

MojoMoon I totally get your point about more provision of public transport and pavements in rural areas but I don't know how much demand there is. If I could still drive, I'd want to live rurally and drive, not continue to deal with public transport.

re banning conversion of business to residential, wouldn't we end up with more empty commercial property? I thought that was largely why the conversions were happening.

I live in Tokyo and it’s pretty much like this here.

I have most things I need in easy reach, with shops and services being clustered around public transport facilities (rail and metro stations in most cases). Further shops and services are mixed in with all the residential stuff, so it’s really very easy. It means most small streets stay very quiet, so walking and biking are easy. Kids can start walking loto school, the park and afterschool activities at a much earlier age when cities are like this, which is very freeing and empowering for parents - I would hate to spend my life taxiing children around like most of my British friends back home have to. Everyone stays fitter and we have local shops that are well used, meaning our public areas stay nice rather than being bleak and depressing and full of boarded-up shops.

Tight control of parking is the essential first step if you want to do this, IMO. Japan has very strict rules on parking - you cannot even acquire a vehicle until you have proof-of-parking, which means you have to have exclusive legal access to a space you either own or are renting month by month, which must be a designated parking space and for your own exclusive use. You cannot just buy a car and plop it on the side of the road by your building, which helps limit the number of cars in an area. Residents are happy with having shops and services mingled in within their residential area, because there is no panic about “Oooh, where will all the cars go, they’ll block the street, they’ll block the pavements…..” The tight rules on parking prevent this happening with no argument allowed, so people walk or cycle to their local stuff.

If you have mobility issues, you can use various mobility scooters and trikes/e-trikes - that said, Tokyo like other cities worldwide still needs to improve on disability access so this could be improved further. Generally, though, elderly people and those with impaired mobility are able to enjoy a lot of freedom and independence here, rather than being depending on adult children coming and driving them about to appointments, so the system works well.

Far too much to read, so here's something in case its not been said: The idea is not supposed to guarantee everything people want is 15 mins away, it's a best effort endeavour, and there is an understanding that the extent to which it works will vary for individuals. That's paraphrasing what was written by the author of the idea said in her book.

There's an understanding too, that there are some things about city life that can't be met locally. It doesn't cover everything a person might want to do.

Fundamentally, what drives this and other ideas is that our way of life is broken. It can't carry on because its unsustainable, and not fixing it is causing us so many problems, with worse to come

Underground car parks and underpasses are very, very expensive to build, if you are building a LOT of them.

Flyovers are also hideous and nobody wants to live near them.

Did you not see the current HS2 fiasco? They couldn’t even get people to accept a railway line going anywhere near their house (which is a large reason why the cost ballooned out of control). Good luck with trying to persuade people to accept enormous concrete flyovers in their areas!

Basically, if the UK wants to prosper, it has two ways it can do this.

It can (Option 1) insist on continuing with the car-centric model, and build the amount of car parking and road capacity needed to do this. This will massive amounts of sprawl and a huge increase in the size of cities like Oxford, which will involve eating heavily into the greenbelt, concreting over a load of countryside, and changing the appearance of town centers in ways that won’t be pretty - lots of pretty and historical buildings and streets would have to go, for example. Think of the kind of development they did in the 1960s, to see the sort of stuff I am talking about. But yes, you can prosper (in financial terms) by doing this. Look at American cities like Houston, actually most American cities - they have become financially prosperous via the car-centered model.

OR (Option 2) it can choose to densify. Get more people living in the urban core/center of towns in apartments (with a high % having no car), invest in good rail and tram links reaching out into the suburbs (where a high % of residents will manage with just one car per households). Make city centers very hard to drive into, and prioritize rail links for travel between cities. If you do this, you can prosper too (look at Tokyo and all the many European cities that have done this, and to a large extent London) and you also get to keep your pretty historical buildings and streets and maintain your lovely countryside. The downside is that everyone’s going to have to be grown-up about getting out of their cars a lot more. Society will also need to accept a higher % of people living in apartments rather than houses.

The trouble with the UK outside London is that cities at the moment are not actually doing either of these two options properly, in large part because most Brits simply won’t make the tough choices necessary or accept the inevitable trade-offs involved.

Brits, for the most part, go nuts when you try to build anything - even a railway line, let alone a bloody big motorway or flyover (which are far uglier and far more disruptive). Absolutely everything in this country, every type of building project, gets blocked, left right and center. Building on the greenbelt, even on ugly bits of it that have concrete all over them already, is intensely unpopular. NIMBYism is an issue in every country, but the UK does appear to have a particularly bad case of it.

But on the other hand, large numbers of Brits are also intensely resistant to the idea of getting out of their cars, walking more, using more public transit, or accepting the idea that a certain percentage of the population (*) might enjoy living in city center apartments. So many people here are intensely, emotionally attached to their cars, and get incredibly angry when anything else is suggested as a possibility.

And so the UK remains in a state of poor productivity and decline, with most areas outside London being effectively dependent on fiscal transfers from London. Because nobody wants to make any hard choices or accept any trade offs.

(*) Take Edgware, in London. A developer is trying to build dense apartment blocks on the site currently occupied by an underused, rundown shopping center and some ugly car parking land - all this is right on a good station, so the residents can live without cars or with minimal car use. Local residents (mostly over 60s) are up in arms, trying to block the development. I’d like to stress, nobody is forcing THEM to live in an apartment - their suburban detached houses are going to stay exactly as they are. But for the local residents, the mere idea of SOMEONE ELSE living in apartments in their neighborhoods is enough to provoke fear and anger. And people are raging about having the amount of car parking space reduced. Yet if the UK is to density and develop proper public transit, there is no way to do this without building more dense housing clustered around public transport hubs.

Getting back to the 15-minute city thing:

I think a lot of people are thinking “So, is the government going to somehow force businesses to relocate to an area or invest money in setting up public versions of these things within each neighborhood?”

No, that it’s how it works.

The way it would work (roughly) is that car use and parking have moreretrsictions placed upon their, while public transit use is heavily promoted (ideally light rail, metro and trams, rather than buses); what happens then is that businesses open up around public transport hubs, and also in some cases woven into residential areas, because demand will naturally lead to this.

If you now find it hard to commute into the city by car due to car parks being taken away and more restrictions on cars (congestion charges, stricter rules in general, more of the city center being pedestrianized, car-access on the roads becoming tighter because more of the road is now being given over for bus lanes and cycle lanes), but hey, now there is a great tram/train line I can use instead, you would shift your commuting towards that transportation line, and then it becomes natural for you to pick up shopping and get services done around the station area. There is no particular need for gov intervention around this - the free market will naturally push businesses to open up in such areas because that is where the demand and access now is.

This is roughly how it works in Japanese and European cities that have adopted this model.

It works out great (honestly!) but there are tough choices that have to made when shifting towards this kind of system. Whether the UK public has any appetite for tough choices is a difficult question. People aren’t very good at that kind of thing in the UK, and there is a tendency to want everything all ways at once (“I want great public transport AND I want to be able to drive everywhere including the center of town, and park everywhere, so nice big roads, oh, and lots of free parking space would be nice….”)

Agreed. I live in London and within 15 minute walk I have both a tube station and a train station, zillions of bus stops, two GP surgeries, a swimming pool and leisure centre, multiple gyms, probably a dozen supermarkets including one of those massive Tescos with clothing and other non-food sections, at least 100 restaurants, pubs and cafes, the Thames, three theatres, an art gallery, music venues, a big ancient forest, lots of parks, and almost anything else you could think of. The only thing we don't have is a cinema, but there are two a bus ride away.

It's utterly shocking to go outside London and see how poorly resourced other parts of the country is. Of course not everyone wants to live in London, but the government shouldn't be allowed to put up housing estates without, at minimum, shops and a GP surgery.

user1477391263
Again, people are reluctant to say it, but it's not the flats per se that Edgware residents object to. It's that Barnet has been targeted (as have other areas) for intensive home building, which in turn means all the unpleasantness of an overcrowded area.

This works if your investments are dependent on a high population, but the ever increasing population is not good for quality of life of ordinary people. I remember when London was much less crowded and quality of life was better, especially for ordinary workers. I think most Londoners don't want to end up like those cities where they have staff helping to pack people onto trains.

Yes, their houses will stay where they are but that is not the point. I loved my flat, but just running an errand was a pain. If the aim is to make everywhere as crowded as Covent Garden, a lot of Londoners don't want it. Certainly no one moved to Edgware wanting that.

There is an obsession with GDP and how many businesses are open in the local area but who benefits? There is a happy medium between overcrowding and ghost town.

The density of the city is spreading outwards everywhere. I think there's probably a connection between that and increasing mental health problems.

In my old London area, I was queuing in the bank and a customer told me off for smiling! I don't normally stand around smiling - but I was about to transfer money for my move out of London, so I was so bloody happy.

I no longer hate running errands because I don't have to walk through tons of people. The general pedestrian anger, shop queue anger etc is so much less of a thing.

We are a small island and very overpopulated in many areas. If anyone has heard different, do say, but I can't see newly created 15 minute cities being not-crowded. Getting better connections for rural areas is a better idea, but less profitable.

As for HS2 - not surprised people were angry at the destruction of countryside, demolition of homes, general disruption. I was leaving an office near Euston when we got a letter saying how intense the noise was going to be.

And the more people we have, the more services we need. It's never ending.

Getting better connections for rural areas is a better idea, but less profitable.

At the risk of horrifying a lot of people on here, I'm with people like Tom Forth on this - the priority needs to be on public transport in urban areas, where there are the population densities that are able to support them and where it's actually feasible for people to live without cars or with one-car-per-household in a high % of cases, meaning that public transport genuinely has the ability to actually slash congestion and reduce the need for road-building and parking-space provision. It isn't going to make much of an impact in rural areas.
One Nobel Prize and a Yorkshire transport policy. (tomforth.co.uk)

Fast and frequent public transport for rural areas sounds like a lovely idea, but given limited resources, it does not always make a lot of money to keep spending on services would be running mostly-empty a lot of the time.

Rural dwellers are always going to be better off in cars because their population densities are just too low to ever support anything more than very limited public transport services (see note); for the minority of people who not going to be able to drive for medical reasons or age, there needs to be some hard decisions about whether rural living is right for them.

I know this sounds like a bit of a mean thing to say ("Surely everyone has the RIGHT to fast and frequent public transport services?") but the reality is that all location choices involve tradeoffs. I chose to live centrally so I'll always have to accept that I'll never have a garden, and will have less space than the average suburban home. I'm not going to petition the government to change this situation; it's a tradeoff I accepted when I chose to live in this kind of location.

(Note) I can of course see exceptions to this, like rural touristy areas where good and frequent public transport links would allow the area to benefit from tourist income without causing mayhem on the roads. The nature of the rural area in question must always be taken into account. I'd also like to see a lot more segregated-from-cars standalone bike trails in the countryside, so that rural teenagers can have more independence and rural adults of working age can their reduce fuel etc. costs and keep roads calmer by swapping out car journeys to bike journeys in at least some cases.

Just want to add; I think that "We should focus on improving rural public transport services!" is a popular remark in many quarters for a couple of reasons

1. "Fair-ism" (which is a big thing in the UK). People in the UK tend to get very upset about the idea that every area cannot necessarily enjoy every advantage in exactly the same way. To me, it's obvious (and not a terrible thing) that if you live rurally, you are not going to get much public transportation interconnectivity, but you do enjoy lots of other nice things instead, like lots more space and quiet if that's what you like. I think people should take these things into account when planning where to live. But maybe I'm not very British. I just mentioned the possibility of standalone cycle trails in the countryside as something that might help many rural teens and working age adults, but I bet someone will be along in a minute to remind us that "Er, what about elderly and disabled?? You realize not everyone is able to cycle, right!?!?" A lot of people in this country immediately get angry about any service that might help merely some people, rather than help every single person.
2. I think a lot of suburbanites are quick to say "Let's improve rural transit instead, surely?" because it's a way of appearing pro-public-transport without having to pledge to use it oneself OR to have to put up with any inconveniences to oneself. If I'm a suburbanite, increased bus services in villages probably won't impact me much. Increased public transport (and cycling) in cities will impact me, because suddenly there'll be buses/trams etc. getting in front of my car, then the road that my car will be able to access will get narrower because space will be taken away to create bus lanes and cycle lanes, and cyclists may start to create pressure for lower speed limits and more car-free zones.

Would just like to close this by adding that Japan, where I live, has infinitely, infinitely, infinitely better public transport in the UK - like, there is just no bloody comparison, seriously. One of the best things about living here, no question. And yet even in rural Japan, you STILL absolutely must have a car if you want any quality of life, and everyone I know who lives in the Japanese countryside has a car and drives a lot, as bus services etc. are so thin. This is true even in popular rural areas which are increasing in population size. If even Japan can't provide fast and frequent public transit for rural people, there is absolutely no way the UK will ever be able to.

Public transport policy needs to focus mainly on cities. Good park-n-ride facilities at outer public transit hubs can ensure rural people can get into cities when they need to.

@EmmaEmerald - if commercial rents are set at an appropriate level, then more businesses can survive in areas where they struggle now
If certain land is permanently restricted to one usage (eg retail or commercial), then value of the land is lower because the money you can earn from renting it (or selling it to rent to a tenant) is lower than if it was residential. The lower value of the land means it can be rented at lower cost. At that moment developers buy a pub/retail unit at the lower value and then get planning permission to change it so the developer keeps the added value of the land rising due to its usage changing - basically the benefits are felt by one person/private company and the costs (in terms of facilities) is borne by everyone else. We should rebalance this away from private gains to public gains.

I think there is too much retail space in some places and some high streets should shrink - changing behaviour patterns and internet shopping mean there aren't going to need to be the number of clothes shops for example as in the early 90s. Some high streets should have some retail space converted to residential in order to create 15 min cities by adding residents to a largely non-residential area.

But the concept of 15 min is more about regular essentials like food shopping, doctors surgeries, parks, schools within a neighbourhood than having Whistles or Jack Wills or Primark within a short walk. That sort of non-regular retail should cluster in an area with excellent public transport so you can easily access it within an hour. But you should be able to buy your food at a reasonable choice of places within 15 mins or go to the park or primary school or community hall for Zumba/playgroup/pensioners tea dance.

This also relies on a bunch of other things being done like the government finally stopping anonymous shell companies owning property, enforcing tax and transparency laws correctly and the ability to enforce planning law breaches with serious fines and even prison and other measures of administrative competency that the government have failed to ensure.

I live in a Uk town and I've got pretty much all of that except work within a 3-mile radius of my house with a garden.

I've also got a car on my drive to go wherever I want when I want, including into the office (a 20 minute drive a handful of times per month). I'm not sure what the point of your post is?

I wouldn't choose to live in an apartment. HTH.

I'm with you op.

People get out almost under a trance by cars, they stop thinking about the possibility of doing anything other than driving.

Agree with all of this

Of course it's an amazing thing. Cleaner air better for walking (so reduction in obesity). The only people lobbying against are big business as it'd be less petrol, less reliance's on super markets ect

I'm curious. We live in a pretty deprived town. But we have reasonable house prices - not cheap though, our 30s house was built to be affordable on one income and now isn't and we have a gorgeous beach. How do we get those facilities?
We'd need a hospital and leisure centre with pool, at least two of each to be reachable in half an hour or so for everyone in town. We'd need to attract more performances to our town hall than just the local dance groups putting on their annual Christmas show. We lack museums. Our town center is full of charity shops reselling Primark stuff and phone shops. Food wise, I can get to a laughably named farm foods and Iceland, both selling UPF.

Does someone suddenly pile a load of cash into our town? Or do we all move to apartments in cities that are better served?

I think "15 minute city" must be wanky new name for "don't let the older high streets die"

Or even, don't have a high street at all, but scatter evenly at 1 mile intervals (and that's a brisk 15 mins walk) across your town/city and relocate everything whenever there's new builds

If they do, so do the people living next to them (assuming you are not talking about a campus way out of town).

It doesn't happen overnight.
But for example - if a new housing development is planned, the developers could be required to build a leisure centre as part of it. That is how the very new pool that opened near me happened - part of a big residential development and it was required to renovate the cruddy old leisure centre as part of it.

Or developers could pay into a fund that is used to improve road crossings to allow you to safely walk somewhere.

Your council could find ways to promote food retail in your local area for example for varying business rates to benefit small high street shops and penalising out of town supermarkets. They could refuse planning permission for any new out of town supermarkets etc. Then Tesco has to look at a town centre site if they wish to sell food in your area.

As for museums, theatre productions - you aren't forbidden from leaving your area! Realistically if you want top class museums or theatre, you will be travelling - ideally via excellent trains - to your nearest big city for those.

It's about designing planning policy to enable people in urban areas to access your regular needs (food shops, schools, leisure centre, playground, GP) within 15 mins.

It doesn't mean you never leave the area especially for things like museums or are forced to move to an apartment in another city. If you need specialist hospital care, then it probably won't be in your town given you need scale for specialist care but if you need regular GP care/dentist care/physio/optician, the aim should be to deliver that locally.

It's literally just a tool to help define planning policy goals. Not a prison sentence.

How can so many people not see their irony when they say they hate the idea of 15min cities because they have no services within 15mim of them and so have to drive everywhere.

Maybe if you supported them, just maybe, you might get more services developing locally.

Also, they more you can get people off roads and onto other forms of transport, the more space it leaves on roads for people that are disabled and/or genuinely have to drive for some reason.

Cars are an incredibly inefficient way to move a single person around a city. There are so many options now. Walking obviously, but e-bikes, e-trikes, scooters, etc.

We need to support building infrastructure for these things, not just obsess about cars.

The local’s have been priced out! It’s a small university city. All HMO’s.

Many many moons ago I used to live in London a 5 minute walk to the station we could be in Victoria/London Bridge/Blackfriars in under 10 Kings X in 15 mins. The upside museums theatres concert halls virtually on your doorstep, 4 major hospitals very close by, jobs of all types, endless shops of all descriptions. You can be anonymous which is a positive and a negative, Londoners IME are tolerant. The downside? Where do I begin noise fumes smallish flat high crime rates at the time considered to be one of the poorest areas in Europe, litter everywhere, people everywhere, cars everywhere and traffic everywhere, a faster pace of life you are unaware of the season changing, you had to either take a train or car to find anything even remotely rural. I was young and for me at the time maybe the positives out weighed the negatives but now I’m old I live very rurally. The upside peace and quiet, I see the seasons changing I watch the sun rising over the sea from my bedroom window, I know my neighbours we all support each other, peace and quiet there is no noise here, I’m surrounded by stunning countryside, there are no people a busy day on my local beach is 4 people on my nearest large “popular” beach 30 people max on a hot day during the summer holidays nearest hospital 40 mins but if you need to see a specialist or require a special test e.g. MRI 2 hours, cancer patient often go 2 1/2 hours and have to be put up in a hotel whilst having out patient treatment, nearest shops are a 20 min drive but that’s really only food and basics if you want furniture e.g. Ikea white goods clothes that are not just for wearing on a farm/walking it’s 2 hours ditto decent museums, and anything beyond amateur dramatics, but we have glorious peace and quiet, cheaper properties, no issues parking (and it’s free) barely any traffic let alone traffic jams, friendly people and a slower pace of life and glorious peace and quiet (have I already mentioned that?). People who move here nearly all make the same comment “There’s no noise here”. I wouldn’t swop this for a 15 minute city for all the money in the world but that’s me I fully appreciate we are all different and at different stages in our lives and at different stages in our lives.